Genesis, since its departure from Hyundai to be the fancy brand with the logo that often gets confused with Aston Martin’s, has been all about sedans. It’s been a nice break in a world where crossovers and SUVs are even taking over the luxury market, but it’s all about to end. The Genesis SUVs are coming.
Other types of vehicles are, too, as Genesis brand head Manfred Fitzgerald told Motor Trend people who limit Genesis “to what they see on the street,” which is all sedans right now, will be “definitely wrong.”
Genesis the sedan brand was fun while it lasted.
Fitzgerald told Motor Trend in an interview published on Monday that Genesis is bringing SUVs to the market, and it’s also “grinding” toward a couple of other cars: one based on the Essentia coupe concept, and another based on the Mint city-car concept. Motor Trend reports that the Mint has the “potential” to be produced, as Fitzgerald said it “hits all the marks” in size and practicality.
As for the Essentia, Fitzgerald told Motor Trend that Genesis is still looking at powertrain options and other configurations, so it’s early in the planning stage.
Neither the production versions of the Mint nor the Essentia have clear plans or timetables—at least that Fitzgerald made public—but the SUVs do. Motor Trend wrote that a midsize SUV called the GV80 will be on the U.S. market in the first quarter of 2020, and that a GV70 compact SUV will be on the way in early 2021.
(Genesis, as new and fresh as it is in the world of the brands, has apparently not learned that naming cars with random letter and number combinations doesn’t work well with the masses. Give it some goofy name of a mythological beast you read about one time, Genesis. Anything is better than numbers and letters.)
The story said Fitzgerald wouldn’t give any powertrain hints for the upcoming two SUVs, but did report this:
Auto industry informants expect the GV80 to use the corporate 3.8-liter V-6 as its base engine, with the 3.3-liter twin-turbo V-6 a likely option.
Some testers have noted the G70 sedan being a tad underpowered in turbo-four form; would that preclude the GV70 compact crossover from having a four-cylinder powertrain? “We will let you be surprised with what we show,” Fitzgerald responded.
The Genesis brand couldn’t have stuck with sedans only forever, because sedans aren’t exactly the way to win over buyers in the modern car market. But at least that’s where the brand started, and the future doesn’t look too terrible, either.